Gianfranco Longhi is president of Anmil, the national association of disabled and disabled workers. His “numbers” on accidents that occurred at work in 2023 are always impressive.
Among them there are also those who, working in environments exposed to asbestos, contract terrible diseases such as mesothelioma, but in general all types of accidents at work are on the increase even if the numbers seem to be decreasing. How come? Because for a long time even getting sick with Covid was considered an “work accident”. Which had its justification and its reason from both a medical and legislative point of view, but now it no longer affects the statistics as it did throughout 2022, adding a series of frightening numbers on workplace accidents in Italy and in Lecco. The problem is that even if we remove the “bloat” from these data, however, what remains is a disheartening panorama:
«In 2022 there were 697 thousand accidents at work and 585 thousand in 2023 – explains Longhi -. But keeping in mind that many workplace injuries in 2022 were due to Covid, the data is not really as positive as it would seem. Same reasoning for fatal accidents: in Italy there were 1,090 in 2022 and 1,043 in 2023, but there were deaths from Covid. While in Lecco there were three fatal accidents in 2022 and seven in 2023 and these without any Covid cases. Of these, however, five were “in progress”, that is, although they were considered fatal workplace events, they did not occur in the companies”.
The fact is that accidents at work are still many, too many. And avoiding them must not be a law on safety that says so, but a good practice that passes through the good will of the worker and the absolute preparation of the employer in terms of training, means and financial resources invested in this field. But, unfortunately, if we look at the Inail data, in 2024 the curve is already soaring: «There have already been 97 thousand accidents at work compared to 86 thousand in 2023. And national fatal accidents were 119 in 2024 compared to 100 in 2023. Fortunately, in Lecco there were 578 accidents at work in 2022 and 542 in 2023, decreasing. And there has been no fatal event so far, hopefully there won’t be any more. But in Lecco there seems to be a particular attention from everyone and I hope this is the reason for the decline. The last fatal accident dates back to October 2023. We were in Oggiono celebrating Anmil day and the company, which had had an accident in the past few days, had learned and communicated that the worker had died on that very day. The entire community of Oggione was shocked. On the other hand, behind the cold numbers there are always people, this is the most important thing.”
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